Today has been pretty uneventful. At least my blood sugar is going in the right direction for the first time in a couple of days. It got as high as 290, but today it's barely above 200 and hopefully it'll get back to the below 200 range that it was a few days ago.

Of course, that might not be the case because I plan on making baked chicken with mashed potatoes and gravy later on, but hopefully because of portion control, hopefully my blood sugar won't spike like it has over the past couple of days.

I have some VG stuff and looking up other things I'd like to work on tonight, as well as fan fic--in spite of my saying that I wanted to work on it, I haven't really touched it that much the past couple of days, but I'm gonna try and make an effort to work on it tonight.

But other than that, today has been pretty uneventful so far, but maybe that's for the best.

Hi everyone! So good to come back to a few posts!! My house is a zoo today as both kids brought friends home to play. I think I must be insane to do that...usually I only allow one to invite someone over at a time, but for some reason, probably temporary insanity, I said yes to both. We'll survive though. Mr. Man's friend goes home soon. They are younger, and MM gets SOOOO worn out and grouchy. He can't handle as much as Bug.Hubs is now on Meds for Diabetes. He had his blood tested a few weeks ago and it was slightly high, then again Monday and it was still high, so the doc put him on meds right away. So now he has meds for blood pressure, cholesterol, and diabetes. But the meds for blood pressure are working wonders...he hasn't had such low blood pressure since....as long as he can remember. I beta read a book for my friend and it was SOOOOO good. I REALLY hope this one is the magic one that gets her published. It was certainly the best of hers that I've read. There are a few things to clean up, but the plot is great.And I'm REALLY looking forward to getting my copy of Lynne's book. I saw the review and it made me want to read it even more.

Susie, CONGRATS!! So glad for you. Do you enjoy the editing process? I'd love to read the chapter you mentioned! As far as singing together, it will depend on where we meet. My brother's husband manages a bar where they do Karaoke every Saturday, but they (the bar) are in the process of moving and I'm not sure when it will be open again. I'll have to ask. Otherwise I'm not sure where there are any karaoke or piano bars...I'll have to look into it! Good luck to your hubs! That is a huge problem here...wage is based on age and experience. 16 year olds only get a couple Euros per hour, and then it moves up from there until you are 23. Everyone over 23 has the same minimum wage...so everyone wants to hire 16 year olds to save money. It's really hard to find a job if you aren't a teenager. Hope your hubs finds something soon!

Lynne, I'm so happy your book is getting great reviews! I can't wait to read it!

Sarah, did you decide to wait to take the test? How's the studying going?

Lynne - I know others here are purchasing your book, but I'm afraid I missed out on instructions for how to order. Can I just go to Amazon and get the e-version? I'm interested in doing that. Question: Of course you have a synopsis for your book, but did you have a sort of "elevator speech" prepared so that whenever anyone asked what your book was about, you had it ready to go? I need to do that for my book. Usually I hedge and say it's a surprise, or just the online friends part, and if I go into details about how I found Twilight and then the Lexicon, then it gets to be way too long.

Songbird - Your brother's husband's bar would be so fun for karaoke,wouldn't it? I guess that was going to be a little far for me to drive to anyway. We'll definitely be emailing each other about trying to establish a plan, but even if there is no karaoke or piano bar around, we should definitely try singing together in some way! Maybe we could do a video of us singing along with on of the movie soundtracks.

Sarah - When are you taking your exam? You won't be able to enjoy life fully before that's over, will you?Sean - I don't think I've talked to you since you found out you had diabetes. I was sorry to hear that! It sounds like you're taking it seriously, which is good. You'll want to try to add some vegetables to your diet (other than potatoes) because you can probably eat as many of those as you want without worrying. So with a meal of fried chicken and mashed potatoes, add broccoli, green beans or asparagus. Also, the breading on the fried chicken is adding a lot of carbs. Try marinating chicken breasts and broiling them in stead. I have some good marinade recipes that each have only five ingredients, and it would be worth it for you to buy some of those basic ingredients to have on hand. One recipe is: oil, white wine vinegar, garlic, dijon-type mustard, dill. I don't have the exact measurements with me right now, but if you are interested, I can get them for you. Another one is: oil, raspberry vinegar, raspberry jam, ginger root, onion salt. Ginger root is pretty cheap because you can just break off a small piece and buy that, you don't have to take the huge piece they have sitting in the produce section.

I'm doing my comprehensive review today..touching on everything I haven't studied hard enough..whatever it takes to get keep my nerves under control. I scheduled it for Friday since we leave Sunday for vacation and I knew I wouldn't be able to relax if it was after the trip! It's do or die at this point..if I don't pass, I have a chance to slip into a math class so I don't break enrollment with my college and therefore do not push my degree back even further..I'm so close to finishing, I can feel it. But of course I'm scared!

It's going pretty well, just nervy of course, but Jason has been an amazing support by helping me and praying for me and generally keeping the house running so I can focus this week.

I've got the Hunger Games on, I think for inspiration, though BD 2 would be a good choice as well..maybe later tonight?

Song-I love hearing all about the escapades of parenting it's fascinating! Glad to hear that they're figuring out what's wrong with your hubby..have you fixed your bike yet? Your day sounds like it was frustrating!

Susie-nope! There's so much pressure on this test since my whole degree hinges on it..they told me if I keep waiting to take it, they may make MORE changes to my degree program, which of course takes more time and cost more money..I've already had to do this once since it happened in the midst of my wedding and I forgot to update them....so yeah I don't know joyous Disneyland will be if I don't pass Love that picture by the way!

Okay, I'm off..keep posting here! I do peek in even if I don't post every day

I got home and went to sleep until about 10:00 tonight. So that's sort of thrown my plans tonight. Things wouldn't have been so bad if the Jeep didn't crap out again on my way home from work. Had the thing kept running another 30 seconds aor so, we'd have made it to Walmart and that probably would've been the end of it.

We also ended up eating-in at Burger King because of this thing's tendency to not want to work. Some electrical relay keeps getting overheated on warm days and it shuts down the fuel pump. I'm starting to think that it needs to be completely replaced.

Other than that, today was a decent enough day. Def. no fan fic tonight, as I hope to get to bed a bit earlier than I have been. So I'll try and look some stuff up and maybe do 1-2 other things, then I'll probably head to bed after I get done with that stuff.

Susie: I've already tried to distance myself from the fried chicken. It's getting warmer out, so it's more of an inconvenience to have the electric fryer out, and because my Dr. advised me to cut back on it. My blood sugar tends to go up or down depending on what I eat and how I eat. I've noticed on the days when it's higher, I don't tend to eat as many actual meals, and instead snack on whatever is easily at hand. That is a bad habit and one that I've been trying to stay away from, but it's hard sometimes.

As for chicken, I've used some store-bought marinades and grilled them and also baked them in gravy. As far as vegetables go, I've always loved corn, and I also like carrots and celery in soups, and I've also been eating a lot of salads recently. I also like onions on sandwiches and in salads, so that's gotta help.

But other than changing my diet, which is probably the source of the main source of the problem, I haven't changed much else, because I'm fairly active, especially at work, and as long as I keep in mind what I should be trying to do with my eating, things do stabilize or even drop as far as my blood sugar. It's just remembering to do that when I get busy or distracted that's the issue.

Bike is fixed! Hallelujah! And I just had the most lovely chat with my friend. I read her book this week, which was SO good and really deserves to be published. I love being able to talk to the person who wrote the book and just bombard them with questions about backstories, etc...it's fascinating. So I had a great time laughing with her about her characters and certain moments, and discussing the things that don't work, which will eventually be changed before the true editing stage. She's trying to convince me to do it as a job for other people, which I'm sure I would LOVE to do, but not sure how to go about that. It would be so much fun, and it would be a nice way to work from home, and get paid for doing something I love anyway, and she says I'd be really good at it and that she's totally taking advantage of me, but I LOVE doing it and it doesn't feel like she's taking advantage of me at all because I feel like I already get so much out of it. So I'm thinking about it.

Sean, you want to be careful with certain veggies. Corn and Peas are very starchy veggies...they turn into sugars, so those aren't the best ones. They are still good for you as far as nutrients go, but you don't want to eat them too often as they will affect blood sugar more than things like spinach, broccoli, etc. (My mom was diabetic and I learned a lot from her diet) Some veggies, like celery, or lettuce, have a higher water content and less starch and you can have large amounts of them without worrying about it. If you want a snack, popcorn made in an air popper without butter or oil is great. You can have pretty much as much as you want. You can use just a little salt for flavor. Be careful of bananas if you are eating fruit....they are also very starchy. You can have the starchy stuff, but try to limit it to once or twice a week, not every day. Good luck!

Sarah, You are studying so hard!! I really hope you pass with flying colors. Have fun at Disney!

Susie, we'll figure something out, I'm sure. I actually don't have any of the sound tracks. I don't really have a working cd player right now and I find that when the kids are home, there's so much noise that it's sensory overload to have music going, and when the kids are at school, I relish the quiet. The exception is when I am baking/cleaning, but my CD player broke, so now I have no way to listen...so I have not bothered to buy any CDs for several years. I know...I'm terrible. Can I please keep my "fan card"?

Lynne, how are things going now that the book is out there? How are you feeling? Are you stressing or just enjoying the moment?

I spent some time yesterday trying to contact book clubs to see if I can do an author visit there. I'm meeting with a writing group in early July, so I'm looking forward to that!

Most of my friends who have bought a copy of The Heir are sending me messages to say that they're enjoying it, which is really good. I'm so happy they like it.

Susan - your hubs has diabetes? That's him and Sean within a short space of time! My grandmother had it. At least it is a manageable illness. Yep, the good reviews have been good.

Susie - I usually just read out the blurb on the back of the book. Try and think about what you'd write on the back of your book, although blurb writing can be the hardest part about publishing a book! Yes, the Kindle version of my book is available at Amazon.

I had a pretty good day at work, though I was expecting the worst because I didn't sleep well last night and I sort of wasn't feeling good. But things turned out a lot better than I thought.

One of the things that did brighten this day is that it seems that I'm making a new friend. Her name's Tracy and she's someone who just started working at where I work. Every time that she's come into my office, she's always said "hi" or "hey" and asked me what I was up to or how I was doing. She also replied to an email that I sent out yesterday to the new workers letting them know that on the days that I work that they can send me things to work on if I have nothing much else to do.

I'm still pretty busy with stuff at work right now, but at least the new workers know that the opportunity is there and Tracy did reply to that message. She does seem to be really social, talkative and out going, things that I wish that I could be more of. I'd like to talk to her more, because she seems really cool.

I also tried one of those new BK Carolina BBQ chicken sandwiches, and they have a lot of new stuff, including a BBQ chicken salad that I'm gonna try out soon.

I get paid tomorrow, and, since I have to leave early if I want to cash my paycheck, I have to get up early, so I'll be headed to bed early tonight, but I still expect to get quite a bit done before I decide that I have to make it to sleep. I also have a few errands to run tomorrow after work, too.

So that's what I've been up to today and what I have planned for tomorrow.

Our new heater is being installed as we speak! Yay! It will be SO nice to have hot water again without having to run up and down the stairs turning on water, then the breaker, then turning off the breaker before turning off the water again, etc...we don't need the heater right now because it's nice weather, but the hot water will be SO nice.

Lynne, Yep...hubs has the beginnings...he's just barely over the normal levels of sugar, but his mom is diabetic and he's overweight so he's at a higher risk, so the doc went ahead and gave him meds. I need to watch it, too, as my mom was also diabetic, but so far mine has been fine. I get my blood tested every year for cholesterol, blood sugar, and for my thyroid.How exciting for you to get to meet with writing clubs and book clubs, etc!!

Sean, that's nice that you are making friends. Is that not a normal thing in your work atmosphere to say hi to people as you come in, etc? I've worked in places where it is normal and in places were people don't do that...it's such an uncomfortable environment when people ignore you. The place I've been working for the past few years was like that in the beginning...it's gotten a LOT better now with changes in management and with turnover of the workers. The people now are much more open and friendly. But I just wondered since you said Tracy always says hi...it seems normal to me that ANYONE would do that.